The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-07-16

We fly across the Red Sea, and glance at Egypt, once the worlds fountain of enlightenment, herself barbaric today; with her wondrous Nile valley, her palm groves; her mighty pyramids, tombs and monu- ments of human vanity, surviving for untold ages the names they were builded to immortalize; and her sol- emn Sphynx, whose stony eyes have for forty centuries beheld the rise and fall of armies, nations and empires without number; land of beauty, majestic memories and ruins. We soar over the sandy oceans of the great Sahara, and the wild jungles of Cep- tral Africa that seem to have been created to give so-called explorers chance to cOncoct weird and wonder ful yarns for other so-called explorers to contradict. We catch glimpses of strange and shadowy monsters, rival ing all the impossible terrors that rear and roar and rage on Barnum's and Forepaugh's circus show-bills prowling amid forests whose awful solitudes have never been broken by civilized sound or presence since the creation or the deluge. Mighty floods roll through empires of darkness and pestilence, where all most ferocious beasts and deadly serpents swarm, and where hordes of dusky savages-an- cestors and kinsmen of 6,OOO,O00 of our free American fellow citizens and voters ill the south-drink human blood from human skulls, and roast and eat each other when their stock of missionaries runs slow. We float over diamond fields and ostrich farms; but all is savage, and the modern Eden is certainly not here.
 We skim across the storm tossed Atlantic, with its two or three narrow l pathways of commerce and it's tens of thousands of square miles of waters that no sail or prov has ever yet explored. We cross the blue Caribbean Sea, the most beauti- ful body of water on the globe, dotted with evergreen islands of feathery palms; and sweep over South America, with its gigantic forests of precious woods; it's cloud snow capped mountains; it's mighty rivers like the Amazon, the Orinoco and the de la Plata, rolling through realms where Nature has streWn, with wanton lavishness, all riches of soil and min eral and scenery; where nearly every tree blooms or bears fruit; where the whole air is radiant with the gorgeous plumage of birds, and heavy with the fragrance of spice woods and the per- fume of flowers; where earth pours out two or three harvestsa year with out cultivation, and where the mines of the lncas still hold treasures un- told. But, with all its riches and it's beauty, it is land of languor and de- moralization, land where ambition dies and energy decays; and the mod ern Eden is not here.
 We fit over Central America, with it's forests of mahogany, rosewood and palms: its plantations of fruit, coffee and sugar, growing without labor or care; its wildernesses of flowers, mon- keys, parrots and macaws; its spon- taneous growth of everything its semi barbarous natives use or need: a land of grand possibilities, unstable government, earthquakes, volcanoes and revolutions. We hover over Mexico, sunny and beautiful land of the Montezumas; grand in scenery, boundless in productiveness; one of the gardens of the gods, yielding everything necessary for the suste- nance or the enjoyment of men, with scarcely semblance of cultivation. Grains, grasses, fruits, vegetables of all the kinds known among us, and thousand that are unknown, springing like weeds from the bosom ot riot ously bounteOus earth; mines of all the precious metals and many precious stones; forests of costliest woods, and old-world empires of free pasture lands. What more is lacking? Stable government, educated people, energy and enterprise. Until these come, the modern Eden, that might be here, must be found elsewhere.
 Over Canada and British America; some riches of soil and mine, vast forests, majestic lakes and rivers; a land of sturdy thrift and honest toll; but too far north and too vigorous in climate for the modern Eden we are seeking.
 We float slowly and lovingly over our own eastern and southern states, for they abound in beauteous scenes and glorious opportunities and possi- : bilities. With all their faults and shortcomings, they are preferable to any regions of the world we have thus far passed over; but the Eden we seek is still beyond. We put patent nipper clothes-pins on our noses as we sail, even five hundred miles high, above Chicago and her ar-famed and farther-fum river. More and more slowly and lingeringly and satisfedly